


Beauty and the Beast

by loveleighe



Series: Mikannie's Grimm Fairytales [1]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: F/F, F/M, Gen, M/M, Multi, NaNoWriMo
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-10
Updated: 2015-11-10
Packaged: 2018-05-01 01:07:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5186405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loveleighe/pseuds/loveleighe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For being so young, they are far too old. He looks at her, solemnly. “So what are you going to do Mikasa?” And he asks the question like he knows the answer already - like he, too, holds close the same answer.</p>
<p>Expressionless, she replies. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>  <i>I’m going to fight.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Beauty and the Beast

Everyone knows the story. The snobby prince shows his colors in the cruelest way, turning a meek old woman back to the streets as she begs on his doorstep for shelter, please, for just one night. She returns later that day - beautiful, and terrifying, and full of rage at his lack of compassion. 

He pulls into himself and closes his blind, locks his shutters. He rots in a castle until the poor, pretty girl falls into his arms. They teach each other about all manners of things; love, life. His inner beauty grows and finally he is free from the curse. He becomes whole again and they live happily ever after.

But this isn’t a fairytale and if there’s one thing Mikasa knows, it’s that there’s no such thing as happily ever after. Not for her. Not anymore.

Monsters? Are just monsters - and it’s everyone else that has to suffer.

☣☣☣☣☣

It’s raining on the day that it happens and she thinks that they call that ‘pathetic fallacy’ - when the weather magically changes to match your mood. She’s been out all day, collecting herbs from the surrounding forest, nothing but the soft splash of wet on leaves and the gentle chirp of hungry birds for company. It’s soothing. The sounds of the wood are familiar to her a lullaby she’s grown to love and Mikasa finds that there’s nothing quite like walking alone with only your thoughts to distract you.

Wild dill weed for the chicken mama is cooking; big basil leaves, because her mama likes to store those in the dry pots by the window once they’ve crisped, so she can crush them and add them to soups and salves. The wild garlic grows tall so she pulls some from the ground, wiping off the dirty cloves and sniffing lightly at the long stems; she salivates, imaging the soup they’ll have tomorrow when the chicken has been picked clean, carcass and organs boiling away in the heavy pot mama hangs above their fireplace. 

She’d asked once why her mama and papa didn’t have a home within town - within the walls that rise out of the forest like a great barrier, blocking her from the rest of the world (or maybe, just maybe - they block the rest of the world from _her_ a tiny, nasty little voice whispers in the back of her mind)

Mama had patted her on the head and quietly turned her away. She hasn’t asked again, because she couldn’t stand to see the quiet fear and longing in her mama’s eyes. 

It’s darker than it normally would be when she returns. The clouds smother the sunset in a haze of dark, streaked occasionally with a crack of lightening. She shouldn’t have been out so long, she knows, but she can’t really bring herself to care anyway. 

The oddness of it all strikes her as soon as she makes it to her walkway, which is naught more than big flat stones pressed messily into the earth. Her front door is hanging open, partially off the hinges and there’s a foreboding feeling lurking in the air. It’s heavy, almost smothering her as she sets her basket aside and hikes her skirt up, tip toeing through puddles and hoping the rain can mask the sound of her steps. 

She toes her shoes off outside the door and refuses to cringe at the rain that seeps into her socks, making her feet soggy and cold. Carefully, Mikasa creeps into the tiny house she calls hers.

The rain gives way to warm, sticky liquid that smells of copper. She knows it’s blood - doesn’t let herself think about it. Just like she doesn’t let herself think about the fact that she’s stepping over her father's corpse. One hand is stretched out as though meant to grab her, or maybe ward it off. The other is bent awkwardly under his body and he stares towards the ceiling, lifeless, head nearly detached from his body. 

She sucks a breath in through her mouth and holds it as she moves from the small mudroom towards the larger kitchen. 

It’s there that Mikasa fully begins to panic. 

Her mother is leaning against the far wall eyes wild and focused on the door. She’s holding her ruined apron to the wound that gapes across her chest. There are two men standing in front of her; one off to the left, the other off to the right. They aren’t paying any heed to Mikasa, instead talking to her mother in gravelly tones that are muted by a clap of thunder. 

Above her mother the word _witch_ scrawled in what can only be blood. Her mama’s or her papa’s? The little girl doesn’t know. All she knows is that there is an ax lifting and her mama meets her eyes in the dark, mouthing _run_.

She’s always been a quiet girl - now is no exception. She turns on her heel and flees back over her father's body, slipping in his blood and scraping her knees against the hard wooden floors. The thump isn’t heard, thank God, and she forces herself back up and out the door, shoes abandoned.

They’ll find the shoes, later, she knows. And when they come - Mikasa doesn’t know what she’s going to do. 

The boy finds her before anyone else does. His green eyes shine bright in the dark and she thinks of a wolf as they circle each other. She’s exhausted, cold and soaked to the bone. He smiles at her, a flash of teeth and offers his name - Eren. 

Shortly after, he offers her his dark red cloak. She takes it, hesitantly and he presses a knife into her hand. In the distance she can hear the boy's father bellowing his name, asking where he is. She makes a curious noise and the boy shrugs, shaking his head. 

Mikasa has never so much as swatted a fly in her eight years of life;

That night she kills two men and when she cries about it later, curled up in bed with the boy named Eren, snug under the roof of the good town doctor the boy curled around her head murmurs softly, “All the monsters have to die Mikasa. They have to die, and we have to fight.”

She sleeps that night and dreams of being a wolf instead of a sheep. Deadly. With fangs and claws instead of small iron knives tucked into sheathes that sit on your hips. She dreams of a green eyed boy who will become a man, whose side she promises to always stand beside. She dreams of fighting - of killing all of the monsters in the world so no one has to fear them ever, ever again. 

The next morning when she wakes with the sun her and Eren stand together and stare out of his small bedroom window. 

For being so young, they are far too old. He looks at her, solemnly. “So what are you going to do Mikasa?” And he asks the question like he knows the answer already - like he, too, holds close the same answer.

Expressionless, she replies. 

_I’m going to fight._

☣☣☣☣☣

Years later their parents - Mikasa’s second set - will be dead. The word witch will be scrawled across the Jeager family homes front wall, disappearing gradually as flames lap at the clay, the wood. They will be thirteen as they stand outside trembling with rage as opposed to fear. They will be thirteen when one of the police men, a man named Hannes whips around to face them and screams run! right in their faces.

Mikasa will be thirteen when she grabs her brother (her world, her everything) and drags him away from the wreckage even as he fights her. But Mikasa is strong now in a way she wasn’t before. She’s strong because she doesn’t care about her fleshy human body but because she does care about his - and it’s not hard, not really, especially with the blond boy who reads to much grabs Eren’s other arm and helps haul them to the front gates of town. 

Chaos will devour their homeland as they escape with nothing but the clothes on their backs and a small knife that they’ll have to share.

They will be sixteen when the soldier attacks Eren, deep in the dark of the woods. As Eren’s human flesh gives way to something more - as he falls to his knees and screams in agony, and finally in fear. 

When they realize they’ve all been living with the monster that hides under their beds walking with them, talking with them, loving them.

_Being them._

☣☣☣☣☣

It isn’t hard to lie to people who don’t really want to see. Mikasa has the cloak that Eren had given her, back when they were eight - it had been to big on her then, and it still is a bit now - and she swings it around her shoulders easily, hefting the crossbow up only moments later. She must make a sight. Face streaked with mud, and blood, hair a wild tangled mess falling past her shoulders. Half of her face is hidden from the cloak, and the clothes that are visible beneath it are just as grimy as the rest of her. The only thing partway clean is her boots and bow and that’s only because she puts the active effort into taking care of them.

She stopped caring about most things a long time ago now. 

She’s a wild child in looks and heart but she calls herself a huntress and people take note. 

Without thinking she turns her head to the left and smiles. Eren isn’t there to smile back. He hasn’t been in seven years - not since the day Captain Levi had hunted them down on horseback and shoved a spear clean through her brother's throat. Mikasa knows that he survived it - one of the side effects of his genetic anomaly is advanced healing. She knows, too, that he would’ve turned shortly after the stabbing, in an effort to fight back...defend himself. 

He always has been a wolf, really, and the last thing you want to do is corner a frightened animal.

She’d damn near taken off Levi’s leg in the process of trying to get Eren back but another person - a crazy looking person whose image screamed witch - had rammed something into the back of Mikasa’s head. She’d laid dazed on the ground as Armin screamed and struggled, trying desperately to get away from the massive man who held him. 

“I told you I smelt one Erwin.” He said, giving Armin a shake. Mikasa had snarled and tried pushing herself up, and the butt of a spear landed against her skull again. She crumpled but didn’t black out, struggling to breathe with mud rubbing into her face. 

“Very good Mike. I have no need for the other two. Dispose of them the normal way.” The blond Commander had said. 

They’d dodged him for so very long, yet there he was - larger than life Commander Erwin Smith of the Survey Corps...the only military faction that wasn’t afraid to leave the safety of the walls. Since the death of Grisha Jeager and his wife, Carla, it had been reported that the number of ‘monsters’ lurking outside had risen vastly. 

She had expected death. Instead, they’d been left behind. 

There was mercy in Erwin Smith’s eyes even as Mikasa managed to grind out three words.

_I’ll kill you._

That damned spear again, and then nothing. 

“Mikasa?” Armin’s voice breaks her away from her thoughts. She glances at the shorter male, scrunching her nose up a bit as it itches. He definitely smells cleaner than her, almost floral. Seeing her look, he grins. “There’s lavender growing nearby. I can show you if you want? If we dry some out and crush it with river sand -”

“No thank you, Armin. I’m fine with just water.” It was what she was used to, at any rate. Plus...she had the feeling that remaining dirty, unclean, helped give her an edge. It helped push back just that little bit of humanity that kept trying to grow bigger. 

“Okay.” He doesn’t argue with her (he doesn’t ever really argue with anyone) and instead grabs her arm and leads her back to the fire at the centre of their camp. They share a breakfast of rabbit meat cooked on sticks, tasteless, and wild berries that Armin’s collected on his way to and from the stream. They sip water out of stolen tin mugs and sit in near-silence as the sun begins to break over the treetops. “We’re getting closer.” He says eventually, when he’s eaten his share of the meat.

Mikasa’s heart aches and she fights the urge to give him more. Armin never takes it and it always ends in a fight - he says she’s the fighter, that she needs the strength. She knows it’s true but there’s something about watching him go without enough that makes her hurt. The chubby cheeked boy she’d grown with is now a slim man. With proper diet, he’d fill out; instead, now, he’s all long slim limbs with tightly corded, coltish muscle. Ragged hair he keeps knotted at the nape of his neck, bangs falling forward to block his eyes from the world. 

“Do you think we’ll find him?” She asks, rising and finishing her water. The small mug is shoved into the pack she carries tied around her waist, out of the way. 

“Maybe. If the locals are to be believed, they can hear...something screaming from there.”

“Yeah but if the locals are to be believed that screaming has been happening for almost fifteen years.” Mikasa argues. “And I don’t know about you but I don’t have the energy to fight - whatever it is they’ve got hidden in those walls.” She gestures south. 

“No.” He hums, soft. “I suppose neither of us have the energy anymore. It’s better than not having any lead at all, though, isn’t it? Mikasa we’ve spent so long looking and this is the closest we’ve ever come to actually...finding something. Maybe finding him. Try not to be so much of a downer about it, okay? Chin up.”

He was smart, she’d give him that. And he was persuasive, too. She can’t help but smile a bit as she watches Armin finish packing up camp, kicking sand over the fire to smother it completely. The thing is? Mikasa hasn’t felt this sure about something in a long time either. She’s certain that of all the days in their lifetimes, today is the one that is going to change everything for the better. Finally. 

“If my calculations are correct we’ll be there before noon hour.” He whispers. They stand on opposite ends of the place they’d rested the night before, glancing around the grim woods that surround them. 

In less than six hours? They could have Eren again.

They could also have excruciatingly painful deaths (at the hands of Levi, she imagines - he looks like the kind of sick fucker that would get off on that, and the urge to kill him makes her blood boil) but she decides not to dwell on that. Armin settles at her right side as they steel themselves to continue on their journey.

They’ve been following him for seven year. And today? Today is the day they get him back. Mikasa can feel it in her bones.


End file.
